Skip to main content

Alex Mitchell: The Roof is on Fire Response


  1. Context: In the Oakland inner city community, teens, specifically teens of color, & especially black teens are engulfed in a life full of violence, adversity, poverty, & a constant struggle for survival against a city that seems to want all but success for them and their developing lives. This project was an opportunity to negate the media's harmful, negative, stereotypical portrayal of them through their own, honest, personal words & stories. 
  2. Content: This project provided the opportunity for the greater Oakland community (as well as whoever was reached via the news broadcast of the event) to hear the truth of the lives of inner-city teens fighting against a system built to make them fail, & give up. It held the potential to dispell the smokescreen of "ghetto life" & replace it with the actual stories of these teenagers' nuanced, valuable lives.
  3. Form: Community-based art was definitely the overall medium used to execute this project. More specifically, a public demonstration using the unconventional aspect (the teens) as the control & the visiting audience as the variable (being that they had no control over what they would hear, from who, & how it would affect them). It could also be labeled as performance art, or even live theatre.
  4. Stakeholders: The groups/individuals invested in the outcome of the project are Suzanne Lacy, her partner Chris, the team of teachers & students involved in the developmental phase of the project, the teen performers themselves, & the Oakland inner-city community. 
  5. Audience: The project was aimed at anyone in the Oakland community (most imminently, but obviously also the hope was that it would transcend that boundary in some way) who had an outside view of what life was like for inner-city teens every day. The affluent Oakland population was a special target, being that the stereotypes they associated with teens of color/black teens were the most potent & blinding.
  6. Engagement Strategies: Multiple strategies were used to garner and maintain engagement. Fundraising was a big one; people donated over $100K to a project they found some level of importance & necessity in. The student/teacher planning board was another, involving minds from both perspectives. The teens themselves were perhaps the most important, as this offered them the opportunity to share their truth, surrounded by their peers: people who they could easily relate to and find comfort in discussing more trepidatious subjects with. Finally, the audience was engaged I think in the most interesting way, by leaving them to their own devices & forcing them to wander & make the choice to listen in, unknowing as to what they would hear.
  7. Goal: This project aimed to bring visibility & positivity into the lives of the teen actors. It also had the goal of translating that refreshed, different view of these teens, their lives, their homes, their neighborhoods, & their values, to the outside communities that had incorrect & misinformed preconceived notions about them.
  8. Values: The project's guiding values were that of honesty, transparency, support, encouragement, strength, positivity, & an extreme dedication to create imminent social change. All of these were expressed the best, in my opinion, in the way that they involved the teens in every step of the process, especially the moment in the film where the organizers willingly accepted feedback from the teens as they began to feel othered & marginalized towards the end stages of the process. That was one of the most striking & altruistic moments for me. 
  9. Resources: Money (from fundraising), access to printing materials & facilities, boardroom/classroom access, classroom supplies, access to the parking structure, ability to & access to rent cars, a full staff, access to the school systems, willing teen participants, the support & trust of the city (especially because there were no police present), the ability to bring the news outlets to cover the project, and so many more...
  10. Outcomes: Watching the peoples' short testimonials after completing their experiences at The Roof is on Fire tell all in terms of the results of the endeavor. Countless people mentioned strong emotional reactions, both positive & negative, to the things they heard from the teens. Audience members spoke of discovering new aspects of inner-city teen life that they had never known or considered, changing perspectives on the truth of the given circumstances of growing up in the households & family situations that these teens did, & most importantly, I think, the understanding of a need for drastic change in the level of support for, encouragement of, protection of, uplifting of, & a huge increase in the quality of life for these teens. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Research- Andrew Moore

My first year at calarts, I was unfortunately raveled in a title 9 investigation revolving sexual misconduct. While I was not a involved directly, I was a bystander and very good friend to the person who started the investigation. I was asked by the affected person to be interviewed for evidence. My experience in the interview room with the investigator was anything but reassuring. I was asked to give my side of the story, but I was pushed by questions asked by the investigator that were geared towards finding the attacker innocent. I used to have trust in the government ability to handle situations like this justly, but I was disappointed to see that the disgusting stories that I've heard about victim blaming and non-fiction. The fact that it was unraveling itself before my eyes was very surprising. Unfortunately the person stayed in the dorms on campus through all of this and at the end of the year there was an even more dramatic event involving the same person and another gir...
Post a Comment
Read more

Prison system effect on communities of color/ Connection to slavery

Although the United States has made some progress, it remains a substantially racially segregated nation residentially. And, the country stays very economically segregated as well. It is not surprising that poor people of color have been incarcerated disproportionately during the massive increase in imprisonment that has occurred in the nation since the early 1980s. It is from poor communities of color that a very large number of felons are removed, and to these same neighborhoods that they return when their sentences end. This population churning has been called “coercive mobility” by criminologists. Although it is the intent of legislatures, judges, police, and prosecutors to protect citizens and communities, there is reason to believe that coercive mobility has the unintended consequence of actually increasing crime and victimization. There is overrepresentation of minority group members among those engaging in crime, but even after this is taken into account, people of color a...
Post a Comment
Read more

What a Riot!

What strategies did she employ in her process of making in play with the youth? Some of the strategies Mady Schutzman employed in her process of making a play with the youth were, utilizing the Joker System, presenting exercises to create a “safe” space by opening the floor and space to the youth to speak, reflect, and share their stories. What approaches resonated with you? Many of the approaches that were used were very intriguing and interesting, but there was one approach that resonated with me. Particularly, the questions that came out of one of the approaches. In the vein of the Joker System, it was designed to ,”promote social inquiry and personal agency by asking questions (How do I know what I know? Who authored the historical narratives we reiterate? Are those stories relevant to me and my community? Who do they privilege and who do they marginalize?” Mandy shared. These questions resonated with me because they are questions I have been asking myself this...
Post a Comment
Read more